Post navigation

South Korea is looking at licensing crypto exchanges. Salon readers may opt into allowing the site to use some cpu power for mining Monero rather than seeing ads. Small European banks look to seize cryptocurrency opportunities to compete with the bigger banks. We look a list of blockchain predictions for 2018 and give our thoughts.

South Korea has been imposing various regulations on the cryptocurrency market, individuals, financial institutions and exchanges. They a re now looking to adopt an approval system based on New York State’s BitLicense system.

The financial authority of South Korea would give licenses to cryptocurrency exchanges to operate where they must meet requirements.

Different cryptocurrency exchanges like Bithumb are welcoming this news as it legitimizes the space and could help unverified FUD news from causing downturns in the market.

Salon has been dependent on advertisements, but in a blog post this past Monday they posted this model is now starting to be insufficient.

Unlike the malware approach which uses all available processing power, Salon says it will automatically detect current processing usage and assign some of what is unused to mine Monero to it’s account.

Provided this is all communicated to users, it can be a good model for people who want content from a site and would prefer to have their computers do some mining verses having to to look at ads.

In related browser mining news, on Feb 11th thousands of websites became infect with malware that hijacks browsers to mine cryptocurriencies undetected by users. More that 4,000 sites were affected including US and UK government services.

Smaller banks in Swizerland, Germany, and Liechtenstein are interested in offering clients opportunities in the crypto space.

Swiss banks Vontobel and Falcon Bank, German Fidor Bank, and Liechtenstein Bank Frick are offering a range of crypto services.

Edi Wogerer, chief executive of Bank Frick was quoted as saying “There are risks involved but there are also really big opportunities. We know what to do from a security perspective so this is a big opportunity for banks like us.” He went on to comment that bigger financial institutions see virtual currencies as a danger to their status quo and are scared “because they don’t understand them, they feel threatened”.

Bank Frick offers advisory support for startups conducting ICOs, screens investors, and facilitates investors access to crypto exchanges. They take payment for these services in cryptocurrency.